Attachment in Surinam-Dutch Families: a Contribution to the Cross-Cultural Study of Attachment
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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL DEVELOPMENT, 1990,13 (3) 333-344 Attachment in Surinam-Dutch Families: A Contribution to the Cross-Cultural Study of Attachment V Marinus H. van IJzendoorn Center for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands A study on attachment in indigenous Dutch families and in families who came to the Netherlands from Surinam—a former Dutch colony in South America is described. Sixty-five mothers and their infants participated, including 26 mothers who had immigrated from Surinam. Attachment be- haviours and maternal responsiveness were recorded in the Strange Situation and in free play. The Infant Characteristics Questionnaire, and a question- naire on child-rearing attitudes were completed. In the Surinam-Dutch group, maternal responsiveness was related to quality of attachment, although the Surinam-Dutch mothers scored significantly lower on the responsiveness scale than the Dutch mothers. The attachment classification distribution of the Surinam-Dutch dyads did not significantly differ from Dutch or global distributions. However, Surinam-Dutch mothers appeared to be more anxious about child-rearing than Dutch mothers. Surinam-Dutch mothers who had recently arrived in Holland tended to show less responsive- ness, and were more anxious about child-rearing than Surinam-Dutch mothers who had immigrated several years ago. These data may reflect strains that arise from the transition from one culture to another. INTRODUCTION t In attachment theory it is hypothesised that the readiness to establish an attachment relationship, defined äs a relatively durable affective relation- Requests for reprints should be sent to Marinus H. van IJzendoorn, Center for Child and Family Studies, Leiden University, P. O. Box 9555, NL-2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands. The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Marion van Dam in scoring the responsiveness scale, and Hans Plomp for coding part of the Strange Situations. The help of Cyril Fräser, Regina van den Berg, Alice Gritter, Corinne van de Heuvel, Ria Pengel, and Linda den Uijl in collecting the data was indispensable. Preparation of this paper was supported by a senior Fulbright Fellowship at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Bethesda, U.S.A.). © 1990 International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development 334 VAN IJZENDOORN ship between children and one or more specific persons with whom they regularly interact (Bowlby, 1971; Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978), is a universal phenomenon. Because of its evolutionary roots, attachment is claimed to be present in all human beings, irrespective of the specific culture in which they were born (Ainsworth, 1967; Bowlby, 1971). Studies in several different cultures have been carried out to test the universality hypothesis, not only in the U.S.A. but also in Western- European countries like Great Britain (Smith & Noble, 1987), The Nether- lands (Van IJzendoorn, Goossens, Kroonenberg, & Tavecchio, 1985), Sweden (Lamb, Hwang, Frodi, & Frodi, 1982), and West Germany (Grossmann, Grossmann, Huber, & Wartner, 1981); in Africa (Kermoian & Leiderman, 1986); in Israel (Sagi et al. 1985); and in Japan (Durrett, Otaki, & Richards, 1984; Miyake, Chen, & Campos, 1985). From these studies it can be deduced that attachment behaviours are present in every culture and that the intracultural differences in quality of attachment—äs measured through the Strange Situation procedure (Ainsworth & Wittig, 1969)—are larger than the cross-cultural differences (Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg, 1988). Cross-cultural comparisons could not take into account, however, South-American cultures, because attachment research has not yet been carried out in that part of the world (Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg, 1988). Following Li-Repac (1982), who studied attachment in Chinese Immigrant families in the U.S.A., we decided to study attachment in families who came to the Netherlands from Surinam—a former Dutch colony. Until the beginning of the seventies, the Surinamese emigrated mainly because they wanted to get a higher level of education in the Netherlands. Most of these emigrants were Creole-Surinamese. In the years before and after the independence of Surinam in 1975 the number of emigrants grew enormously because of the negative economic prospects in Surinam, and because of the insecure political Situation there. Hindustani, Javanese, and other ethnic groups decided to emigrate to the Netherlands especially because they feared Creole domination after independence. In 1985 more than 30% of the whole Surinamese population was residing in the Netherlands (about 195 000 people) (Van den Berg-Eldering, 1988). Of course, it is not possible to describe "pure" cultural differences when Immigrant families are studied, because they are in a transitional stage, being exposed to new cultural values (Li-Repac, 1982). Nevertheless we hypothesised that parents raised in Surinam would show at least some culture-specific child-rearing behaviours and attitudes. The question then is whether attachment patterns found in the Surinam-Dutch group are comparable to those found in families from other cultures, and especially in Dutch families. Furthermore, intracultural differences should be fo- cused upon because the Surinam-Dutch group consists of families from different ethnic origins, i.e. Creole, Hindu and Javanese. Before being ATTACHMENT IN SURINAM-DUTCH FAMILIES 335 able to answer these questions, however, the validity of the Strange Situation procedure to measure attachment in Surinam-Dutch families must be established. Parental responsiveness to infant's signals is consi- dered to be one of the most important validity indices for attachment security (Ainsworth et al., 1978; Bretherton, 1985; Lamb, 1987). It was therefore hypothesised that in the Surinam-Dutch sample a higher degree of maternal responsiveness would correspond with greater infant attach- ment security. In sum, four hypotheses will be tested. First, we hypothesise that the Strange Situation procedure is a valid Instrument to measure attachment security in our Surinam-Dutch sample, and correlates with maternal responsiveness. Secondly, we hypothesise that the Surinam-Dutch attach- ment classification distribution does not differ significantly from the distri- bution in a comparable Dutch sample nor from the "global" distribution (Van IJzendoorn & Kroonenberg, 1988). Thirdly, we suppose that intra- cultural differences in attachment classification distribution may be greater than cross-cultural differences. Fourthly, it is hypothesised that Surinam- Dutch mothers have not been completely assimilated into the Dutch culture, but on the contrary show different child-rearing behaviours and attitudes from Dutch mothers. METHOD Subjects In this study 65 mothers and their infants participated. All subjects had Dutch nationality, but 26 mothers had immigrated from the former Dutch colony, Surinam, a South-American country. Mean duration of stay in Holland was 13.2 years. (SD = 4.89; minimum 6 years and maximum 22 years). Fifteen mothers from the Surinam-Dutch sample were Creole, eight were Hindu, and three were from other ethnic groups. Mean educa- tional level of the Surinam-Dutch mothers was 4.4 (SD = 1.63) on a scale ranging from l (low, i.e. 6 years of school attendance) to 9 (high, i.e. 16 years or more). Their infants were 18 months old (SD = 2.10) and 39% of the infants were boys. Mean educational level of the 39 Dutch mothers was 6.2 (SD = 2.62). The Dutch infants were 18.7 months old (SD = 0.61), and 49% were boys. Subjects were recruited through birth announcements in a local paper; and through personal contacts of research assistants. Procedures The Strange Situation. The Strange Situation procedure for measuring quality of mother-infant attachment consists of eight episodes, the last seven of which should ideally last 3 minutes each; episodes may be 336 VAN IJZENDOORN shortened, however, if the baby is very upset. The infant is confronted with a stränge environment (i.e.the playroom in the laboratory), with a Strange person, and with two separations from the mother (for details see Ains- worth et al., 1978). To assess the quality of the attachment relationship, the behaviour of the infant is scored on six 7-point rating scales. The scales are for proximity and contact seeking, maintenance of contact, resistance, avoidance, search behaviour, and distance interaction. The pattern of scores in the two reunion episodes leads to the classification of mother- infants dyads äs having anxiously avoidant attachment (A), secure attach- ment (B), or anxiously resistant attachment (C). Two native Dutch observers (Hans Plomp and Marinus van IJzendoorn) independently coded 20 video-recorded Strange Situations. Mean reliabil- ity of the interactive scales was 0.78; intercoder agreement for classification in the three main categories was 90%. The author of this paper, who coded all Strange Situations, was trained by Brian Vaughn in a Strange Situation workshop at the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis). After coding crying behaviour in the two reunion episodes following the coding system of Ainsworth et al. (1978) (intercoder reliability 0.99), a continuous scale for security of attachment was computed, based on the algorithm validated by Richters, Waters, and Vaughn (1988). Responsiveness. Responsiveness was defined äs the mother's ability to perceive and Interpret accurately signals implicit in the infant's behaviour, and to respond to them promptly